Cellular telephone use in the United States has dramatically increased over the past few years. In recent years, the size of the cellular telephone units have shrunk considerably, and portable and handheld units have become commonplace. Mass retailers have replaced specialty dealers and former distribution and installation systems. The mass retailer concentrates on selling the consumer a cellular telephone and prefers to spend less time installing or “activating” the purchased cellular telephones, as their time can be spent elsewhere at a greater profit.
Currently, activation is a long process starting with a sale of the cellular telephone by the retailer. The buyer then fills out an application for service on a form supplied by a predetermined carrier. The application requests identifying subscriber (buyer) information, plus some information about the particular cellular telephone for the carrier's information. Once the application is completed, the retailer then communicates the application information to the carrier where it is reviewed for credit worthiness, etc. If approved, the cellular telephone information is entered into the carrier's wireless system.
To date, the activation process is manually done by the retailer's technician or even sales clerk, or humans via a call center or the like. Unfortunately, the use of retailer employees and humans for such activation process is cumbersome and expensive.
There is thus a need for a system that utilizes an automated process for activation of cellular phone accounts. While such automated processes have been developed for accessing various services (i.e. stock quotes, weather information, sports information, etc.), there has been no automation of the cellular phone account activation process.